Saturday, December 21, 2013

Putting preprints on arXiv increases your h-index

... but it's not the only reason why you should do so. Let me explain!

My upcoming paper on amide proton chemical shifts in proteins was accepted on November 11 by PLOS ONE. The tentative publication date is December 31. Pretty goddamn, horribly slow if you you ask me.

Their only job at this point is to apply fancy formatting to a LaTeX document. This apparently takes 7 flippin' weeks?

However, this is no problem (and enough rage). I have had a preprint available on arXiv since I submitted the first draft. Since then it has been peer reviewed and accepted, and I have uploaded the same version to arXiv as the one we have accepted in PLOS ONE

Today I was even cited by a paper in a "real" journal (Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation) by the Ochsenfeld group in Munich. See here:

This might eventually increase my h-index, give me an edge when applying for money, etc. I am even waiting for a review on another of my papers in PeerJ which cites this very same paper on arXiv once more. My h-index might increase by TWO one because of this.

But the most important thing here is: The information I had freely available on arXiv before the entire cycle of waiting, peer review, waiting, acceptance, waiting, publishing was over had found it leverage another study.

This proves, that preprints are indeed useful. And of don't deposit preprints your are not only holding back everyone else, but also yourself. If a publisher doesn't allow preprints, tell them to change their policies or, alternatively, to continue their cooperating with the Devil.